If you are using
Internet Explorer 10 (or later), you might find some of the links I have used won't
work properly unless you switch to 'Compatibility View' (in the Tools Menu); for
IE11 select 'Compatibility View Settings' and then add this site
(anti-dialectics.co.uk). I have as yet
no idea how Microsoft's new browser,
Edge, will handle
these links.

Hegelism is
like a mental disease; youcan't know what it is until
you get

it, and then you can't know because you have got it --Max Eastman

[Anyone who objects to my quoting Max Eastman
should check this
out first, and then perhaps think again.]

For some reason I can't
work out, Internet Explorer 11 will no longer play the videos I have
posted to this page. Certainly not on my computer! However, as far as I
can tell, they play in other Browsers.

You are viewing the
widescreen version of this page; the narrow screen version can be accessed
here.

According to
my sources at
Marxism 2007, in response to a challenge that dialecticians
use obscure jargon concocted by ruling-class hacks over the last 2300
years in order to try to make their theory
work,
John Rees alleged that this site
also uses technical language.

Sure, some technical terminology
has been used at this site, but
this is merely a shorthand device; every such term has been
paraphrased in ordinary language (as
Marx himself enjoined of us). This can't
be said of the obscure jargon employed by dialecticians.

A comrade replied to my
letter; you can read the original letter, his reply and my response -- Engels
And Mickey Mouse Science --
here.

July 2012: A
supporter of this site sent a letter to Socialist Worker, which they
chose not to print. You can read it here,
and then try to guess why the editors declined to publish it.

October 2012: The same supporter sent a couple
of letters to the editors of Socialist Review and Socialist Worker
in response to two articles about John Molyneux's new book, The Point Is To
Change It: Introduction To Marxist Philosophy.

They chose not to publish either of them (no
surprise there, then!). They can both be accessed here.

Anyone trying to view these Essays with
Mozilla Firefox might find that some of the
symbols I have used won't show up on their screens;
in addition, the page formatting might change rather erratically.

The editor I have
used to write this material is Microsoft's FrontPage 2003,
which doesn't seem to 'like' Firefox.

27/02/19: I have
just finished re-writing Essay Nine Part One -- Why Workers Will Always Reject
'Materialist Dialectics',
adding just over 2,000 words of new material, which makes the Essay about 2.6% longer. I have
also reorganised the Essay a little, clarified the argument and corrected a few errors and typos.

01/02/19:I have again
re-written Essay Four Part One -- Formal Logic Can Handle Change,
adding approximately 6500 words of new material, which makes it 6%
longer. I have also slightly reorganised the Essay, clarified the argument and corrected several errors and
typos.

October 2018

I am having to move flats
since the owner of my flat defaulted on his mortgage and it was sold under his
feet.

There will be no more
updates for couple of months.

September 2018:

03/09/18: I have now
re-written Essay Eleven Part One --The
'Totality' -- WTF Is It?I have added
approximately 4,000 words of new material, making it 4% longer. I have also made
my argument clearer and corrected several errors and typos.

July 2018:

30/07/18: I have just
re-written and re-organised Essay Four Part One -- Formal Logic Can Handle Change.
I have added just over 5,000 words of new material, making it approximately 5%
longer. I have also made my argument clearer and corrected several errors and
typos.

04/06/18: I have
completely re-written and re-organised Essay Seven Part One -- Engels's Three 'Laws' Of Dialectics Debunked.
I have added 12,500 words of new material, making it approximately
7% longer, clarified the argument and corrected several errors and typos.

I have corrected several
errors and typos in both, adding approximately 6300 words of new material to
Essay Two (making it just under 5% longer) and about 5000 words of new material
to Four Part One (making it also about 5% longer).

February 2018:

14/02/18: I have just
published two more instalments in my long-running reply to a Confused
Marxist-Leninist, who posted two largely incoherent videos which tried to
respond to an Introductory Essay of mine -- i.e., Refuting a Weak Attempt to
Refute Me 11 & 12. All my replies to this individual, including the latest
two, can be accessed here.

09/02/18: Essay Thirteen
Part Three -- 'Mind', Language, And 'Cognition'
-- has been completely re-written and reorganised. I have clarified
the argument, corrected several typos and errors and added over 11,000 words of
new material, making it approximately 6% longer.

January 2018:

25/01/18: Because it sets
up the other Essays at this site, I have completely re-written and re-organised
Essay Three Part One --How Abstractionism Undermines
Dialectics.
It shows how core ideas Hegel dreamt up originated in Ancient Greek Metaphysics
and Medieval Theology (connected with the re-configuration of subject-predicate
sentences as identity propositions), and how this abstract approach to knowledge
has totally undermined, not just Dialectical Materialism, but the language used
by dialecticians to explain their theory.

I have reorganised this
Essay, clarified the argument considerably, corrected several serious errors and
annoying typos, and have added approximately 7500 words of new material, making
it about 6% longer.

December 2017:

18/12/17: Essay Eight Part
Two -- Why Opposing Forces Aren't Contradictions-- has just been
re-written. I have corrected several errors and typos, clarified the argument
and added approximately 12,000 words of new material, making it about 12%
longer.

04/12/17: I have just
re-witten the opening Essay of this site -- Why I Began This
Project. The argument has been clarified, with 800 words of new
material added, making it approximately 2% longer.

November 2017:

15/11/17: The second edition of Richard Seymour's excellent book about
Jeremy Corbyn was published last month:

05/11/17: Because of its
complexity, I have just re-written Essay Eleven Part Two: Dialectical Wholism -- Full Of Holes
I have clarified the argument, corrected a few errors and typos, and added 3,400
words of new material (making it approximately 5% longer).

October 2017:

05/10/17: I have just re-written two
Essays:

(1) Essay Four Part
One: Formal Logic Can Handle Change.
I have completely re-designed this Essay and have also greatly clarified the
argument; I have also corrected a few errors and typos. Approximately 2,300
words of new material has been added, making it roughly 2.5% longer.

(2) Essay Five: Why Motion Isn't Contradictory.
The argument has also been greatly clarified, and a few errors and typos
corrected. 3,500 words have been added, making it roughly 4% longer.

14/02/17: I have just
re-written Essay Three Part Two -- Abstractionism: 'Science' On The Cheap. I
have added approximately 8000 words of new material, making it about 10% longer.
I have also clarified the argument and corrected several errors and typos.

I have corrected a few
errors and typos and added just under 2000 words of new material, making it
approximately 2% longer.

December 2016:

12/12/16:Essay Five --Why Motion Isn't Contradictoryhas just been
re-written. I have clarified the argument considerably, corrected a few errors
and typos with just over 2500 words of new material, making it approximately 3%
longer.

12/11/16:
Essay Ten Part One --
Dialectical Materialism:
Refuted By Practice And History
has just be re-written and re-organised to make the argument clearer and run
more smoothly, adding approximately 6,000 words of new material, making it 8%
longer. I have also corrected a few errors and typos.

I am in the middle of
reformatting the Essays published at this site, replacing much of the garish red
font with black. I am also having to correct several other serious formatting
glitches mysteriously introduced by the editor I have used, Microsoft's
FrontPage. This should take another two or three weeks to complete.

August 2016:

18/08/16: I have just
finished re-writing Essay Eight Part Two -- Why Opposing
Forces Aren't Contradictions --
adding just over 18,000 words of new material, making it approximately 22%
longer. I have also clarified the argument and corrected several errors and
typos.

In addition, I have
added a section on Immanuel Kant's attempt to
introduce 'real opposition'/'negation' into philosophy, which 'concept', we are
told, was integral to Hegel's own invention of 'dialectical contradictions'.

I have also critically
analysed Tom Weston's attempt to link a throw-away
remark Marx added to Volume One of Das Kapital (about elliptical motion)
to Hegel's confused introduction of 'dialectical contradictions'.

I will say more about
Weston's ill-considered article in a later re-write of
Essay Nine Part
One.

13/08/16: A couple of
months ago I re-wrote Essay Six -- Trotsky And Hegel -- Or, How To Misconstrue The 'Law' Of Identity,
but on re-reading it, it was apparent that the argument wasn't as clear as it
could or should be.
I have now re-written it again, adding just under 3,000 words of new material, making it approximately
5%
longer still, greatly clarifying the argument and correcting several errors and
typos.

I have also clarified the argument and corrected several errors and
typos.

12/06/16: Last year, a
self-styled 'Marxist-Leninist' (who calls himself 'The Finnish Bolshevik' [TFB])
published a video at YouTube criticising an Essay I wrote some time ago
at the behest of one or two younger comrades who wanted a basic introduction to
my criticisms of DM. I subsequently published a reply to this video, but TFB has
now posted a second video at YouTube attempting to respond to a few of my
replies to him.

[Links to the first video
and my replies to it can be found at the above link.]

04/06/16: I have just finished re-writing Essay Four Part One -- Formal Logic And
Change.
I have added approximately 13,500 words of new material, making it roughly 17%
longer. I have also clarified the argument and corrected several errors and
typos.

Up-to-date
analysis of how Corbyn rose to the head of the Labour Party, and
his prospects for staying there.

Jeremy
Corbyn, the 'dark horse' candidate for the Labour leadership,
won and won big. With a landslide in the first round, this
unassuming antiwar socialist crushed the opposition,
particularly the Blairite opposition.

For the first time in decades, socialism is back on the agenda
-- and for the first time in Labour’s history, it controls the
leadership. The party machine couldn't stop him. An almost
unanimous media campaign couldn't stop him. It is as if their
power, like that of the Wizard of Oz, was always mostly
illusion. Now Corbyn has one chance to convince the public to
support his reforming ambitions.

Where did he come from, and what chance does he have? This book
tells the story of how Corbyn's rise was made possible by the
long decline of Labour and a deep crisis of British democracy.
It surveys the makeshift coalition of trade unionists, young and
precarious workers, and students, who rallied to Corbyn. It
shows how a novel social media campaign turned the media's
'Project Fear' on its head, making a virtue of every accusation
they threw at him. And finally it asks, with all the artillery
that is still ranged against Corbyn, and given the crisis-ridden
Labour Party that he has inherited, what it would mean for him
to succeed.

April 2016:

24/04/16:
I have just finished re-writing Essay Eleven Part Two -- Dialectical Wholism -- Full Of Holes.
I have added just over 3,000 words of new material, making it approximately 5%
longer. I have also clarified the argument and corrected several errors and
typos.

17/04/16: Having
re-written Essay Three Part One, I thought it wise to do the same to its sequel,
Essay Three Part Two -- Abstractionism: 'Science' On The Cheap. I
have added approximately 4000 words of new material, making it about 5% longer.
I have also clarified the argument and corrected several errors and typos.

02/04/16:
I have just finished re-writing Essay Three Part One -- How Abstractionism Undermines Language And Science. I have added just over
25,000 words of new
material, making it approximately 26% longer. I have also clarified the argument
and corrected several errors and typos.

However, the biggest
change is that I have added an Appendix which contains a detailed criticism of
an attempt to defend Hegel against criticisms advanced by
Bertrand Russell.

February 2016:

10/02/16:
Essay Thirteen Part One -- Lenin's Disappearing Definition Of Matter
-- has just been re-written. I have added just over 3,000 words of new material,
making it approximate Ely 4% longer. I have also clarified the argument and
corrected several errors and typos.

02/02/16:
I have just finished re-writing Essay One -- Why I Began This
Project. I have added approximately 3,000 words of new
material, making it roughly 10% longer. I have also clarified the argument
and corrected several errors and typos.

January 2016:

22/01/16:
I have just finished re-writing Essay Seven Part One -- Engels's
Three 'Laws' Debunked. I have added just over 15,000 words of new
material, making it approximately 10% longer. I have also clarified the argument
and corrected several errors and typos.

I have added just short of 14,000 words
of new material, making it approximately 12% longer. I have also made the argument
clearer and have corrected several errors and typos.

I have re-written this
Essay again so soon after the last re-write because, as I say in the preamble, I wasn't happy with the way I had approached this topic.
This means that it
will have to be re-jigged many more times before I am content with the end
product.

I have added 11,000 words
of new material, making it just over 10% longer. I have also made the argument
clearer and have corrected several errors and typos.

10/08/15: I recently
spotted an article in Weekly Worker written by Jack Conrad that attempted
to defend both DM and the traditional view that Marx and Engels were of one mind
when it came to that theory/method.

I wrote a 2000 word reply
which they published in edited form
as a letter.

I have made the
argument clearer and added about 3000 words of new material, making the Essay
approximately 7% longer.

20/12/14: A few years ago
(and long before their disastrous handling of rape allegations made
against a former leading member of the UK-SWP) I wrote a letter to Socialist
Worker about, would you believe, Gödel's theorem.
I made the point that
the results of that theorem should only be accepted by Platonists.

They chose not to publish
it.

Since then, I have been
regularly adding new material to a series of addendums to that letter. I have
now added the
latest batch of new material (which largely relates to a paper I have
just read that was written by a Professor of Mathematics concerning the
incoherence of the idea that there are, or could be, infinite sets).

I have added just over
5000 words of new material, making the Essay approximately 7% longer. I have
clarified the argument, and corrected several mistakes and typos.

November 2014:

15/11/14: I have just
received a copy of
Henri Wald's seriously mis-titled
Introduction To Dialectical Logic. I would have obtained this work long ago,
but copies on the Internet were far too expensive. However, a few weeks ago, one
became available in my price range.

This book is, however, a
classic example of how not to introduce a topic, since it is full of
technical jargon and seems to have been written by someone who believes that if
a complicated and incomprehensible sentence can be substituted for simpler
words, then that on its own somehow elevates any thought it attempts to
communicate into a superior form of philosophy. This is typical of Traditional
Thought in this area, and, as several Essays published at this site show,
dialecticians are only too keen to demonstrate how traditional and
conservative they are in
this respect.

Be this as it may, Wald
has made some attempt to respond to several criticisms I have levelled against
this ruling-class import into the workers' movement (clearly without any
knowledge of my work, since Wald's book was published long before I began to
write these Essays!). That being the case, over the next few months I will be
adding (to several of my Essays) a series of rebuttals to Wald's rather weak
attempt to defend this indefensible theory [DM].

"Five years into
capitalism's deepest crisis, which has led to cuts and economic pain across the
world, Against Austerity addresses a puzzling aspect of the current
conjuncture: why are the rich still getting away with it? Why is
protest so ephemeral? Why does the left appear to be marginal to political life?

"In an analysis which challenges our understanding of capitalism, class and
ideology, Richard Seymour shows how 'austerity' is just one part of a wider
elite plan to radically re-engineer society and everyday life in the interests
of profit, consumerism and speculative finance.

"But Against Austerity is not a gospel of despair. Seymour argues that
once we turn to face the headwinds of this new reality, dispensing with
reassuring dogmas, we can forge new collective resistance and alternatives to
the current system. Following Brecht, Against Austerity argues that the
good old things are over, it's time to confront the bad new ones."

January 2014:

20/01/14: I have just
begun work on a new addition to this site: Essay Twelve Part Four --
Dialectical Materialism And Linguistic Idealism. Is Nature 'Rational'?

This Essay continues from
where Essays Three Part One and Twelve
Part One
left off and examines the 'world-view' DM-theorists inherited from Mystical
Christianity and Hermetic Philosophy, via Hegel (upside down or
'the right way up') -- i.e., that 'reality' not only has a 'rational' structure,
humans beings (in the shape of DM-theorists) can comprehend it.

"Blistering
and timely interrogation of the politics and motives of an
infamous ex-leftist.

"Irascible
and forthright, Christopher Hitchens stood out as a man
determined to do just that. In his younger years, a
career-minded socialist, he emerged from the smoke of 9/11 a
neoconservative 'Marxist,' an advocate of America’s invasion of
Iraq filled with passionate intensity. Throughout his life, he
played the role of universal gadfly, whose commitment to the
truth transcended the party line as well as received wisdom. But
how much of this was imposture? In this highly critical study,
Richard Seymour casts a cold eye over the career of the 'Hitch'
to uncover an intellectual trajectory determined by expediency
and a fetish for power.

"As an orator
and writer, Hitchens offered something unique and highly
marketable. But for all his professed individualism, he remains
a recognizable historical type -- the apostate leftist.
Unhitched presents a rewarding and entertaining case study,
one that is also a cautionary tale for our times."

03/01/13: I am in the
process of re-writing Essay Thirteen Part Three -- Mind, Language,
And Cognition -- posting the changes as they are being made.

08/10/12: A supporter of
this site has sent a couple of letters to the editors of Socialist Review
and Socialist Worker in response to two articles about John Molyneux's
new book, The Point Is To Change It: Introduction To Marxist Philosophy.

They chose not to publish
either of them (no surprise there!). They can both be accessed
here.

"Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number
of prominent thinkers on the Left found themselves increasingly aligned with
their ideological opposites. Over the last decade, many of these thinkers have
become close to Washington; forceful supporters of the War on Terror, they help
frame arguments for policymakers and provide the moral and intellectual
justification for Western military intervention across the globe. From Kanan
Makiya, one of the chief architects of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq,
to Bernard Henri-Levy’s advocacy of 'humanitarian' intervention, The Liberal
Defense of Murder traces the journey of these figures from left to right
and explores their critical role in the creation of the new American empire.
With wide-ranging testimony from many key figures on the left, this is a crucial
account of the emergence of the 'pro-war left,' and its shaping of our post-9/11
world."

Critical comments about the
first edition:

“"Richard
Seymour's obsessively researched,
impressive first book holds its
place as the most authoritative
historical analysis of its kind."
-- Resurgence

"[T]ruly impressive breadth and
depth...[providing]...a new European
perspective -- and a warning -- on
the left's pragmatic and ultimately
short-sighted support for imperialist
adventures." -- Journal of
American Studies

"[A] powerful counter-blast against
the monstrous regiment of 'useful
idiots'" who have "contributed in
recent decades to the murderous mess
of modern times."
-- Times of London

"[A]n excellent antidote to the
propagandists of the crisis of our
times."
-- Independent on Sunday

"[T]imely, provocative and
thought-provoking."
-- Independent

"Among those who share
responsibility for the carnage and
chaos in the Gulf are the useful
idiots who gave the war intellectual
cover and attempted to lend it a
liberal imprimatur. The more
belligerent they sounded the more
bankrupt they became; the more
strident their voice the more craven
their position.… Richard Seymour
expertly traces their descent from
humanitarian intervention to blatant
Islamophobia."
-- Gary Younge

"Indispensable...Seymour brilliantly
uncovers the pre-history and modern
reality of the so-called 'pro-war
Left'."
-- China Miéville

"[E]ssential reading."
-- New Statesman

11/07/12: A character from Finland, or so I assume, is re-publishing large
chunks of my Essays
at an obscure Finnish site, [the posts have now
been taken down -- September 2012] only then to add
offensive (often scatological), superficial, and misleading comments about them.

I can't read Finnish, the language in which these impertinent remarks have been
written, but from the imperfect translation Google supplies, it is clear
that this character hasn't read my work with any care at all.

This is
typical of Dialectical Mystics -- as I have pointed out at the
foot of this page.
'He' certainly hasn't the courage to take me on directly (here,
for example), so 'he' simply snipes away at me, posting little other than abuse,
irrelevant comments and lies.

15/06/12 -- Back in the 1990s, I came across an odd article in a collection of
essays about Hegel, called 'The
Formalisation of Hegel's Dialectical Logic', by Michael Kosok. When I
first read it I concluded it was either a joke or a hoax since it was written by
someone who either didn't know what a formalisation even looked like, or who was
writing for those who didn't know and who would thus swallow any old rubbish.

Even
so, that didn't stop dialectically distracted comrades from referring me to this
odd piece of work, perhaps in the mistaken view it would 'sort me out'.

Well, I
have now published what is, I believe, the very first detailed demolition of
this 'formalisation'. Visitors can access it
here.

I have added about 32,000 words of new material, clarified the argument and
corrected several typos and errors, making it approximately twice its previous
length.

Incidentally, the on-line version of Kosok's essay is riddled with typos -- many
minor, several major. In the above takedown, I have quoted Kosok extensively,
and corrected these errors.

07/06/12: Although I was aware of this book several years ago, I have just
received a copy of Radical Currents in Contemporary Philosophy (Warren
Green Inc, 1971), edited by David DeGrood, Dale Riepe and John Somerville.

This
book contains what is easily the best analysis of an obscure dialectical
doctrine, The Unity of Opposites (by V J McGill and W T Parry) that I
have encountered in over 25 years researching this 'theory'.

Having
said that, these authors have simply ignored the numerous serious philosophical problems
this theory faces, many of which I have levelled against this doctrine in Essay Seven
Part One, problems which should have been obvious to anyone who
approached this mystical 'theory' with a healthy dose of materialist-inspired
scepticism.

Even
so, I will add several comments on this article in a later re-write of Essays Four
Part One, Seven Part One and Eight Part Three.

I have
corrected several errors and typos, clarified the argument, and added about 15,000
words of new material -- which makes this Essay about 12% longer.

08/05/12: American Insurgents:A Brief History of
American Anti-Imperialism,
by Richard Seymour is a new book
well worth checking out, available in the UK next month.

From the publishers
website:

"American
Insurgents is a revealing, often surprising history of
anti-imperialism in the United States since the American Revolution. It charts
the movements against empire from the Indian Wars and the expansionism of the
slave South, to the Anti-Imperialist League of Mark Twain and Jane Addams; from
the internationalists opposing World War I to the Vietnam War and beyond. It
shows that there is a surprising, often ignored tradition of radical
anti-imperialism in the US. Far from being 'isolationist' in the fashion of Ron
Paul and Pat Buchanan, the book contends, these traditions were often the most
internationalist and cosmopolitan currents in US political history. The most
ambitious movements formed direct relationships with the victims of US
expansionism, from the abolitionists uniting with Native Americans to stop
colonial genocide to the solidarity movements in central America and the 'human
shields' in Palestine and Iraq. Far from being the privilege of the rich and
educated, antiwar activism has been most evident among the poor and oppressed.
It has been most militant when visibly connected to domestic struggles and
interests, such as slavery, civil rights, women’s oppression and class. Above
all, the book contextualizes each anti-imperialist movement in the evolving
structure of US expansionism and dominance, and explains how some movements
succeeded while others failed. In so doing, it offers a vital perspective for
those organizing antiwar resistance today."

Also worth mentioning:
Richard's earlier book, The Liberal Defense of Murder, will be re-issued
in paperback, 04/07/2012, with a new chapter added bringing the story
up-to-date:

"Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number
of prominent thinkers on the Left found themselves increasingly aligned with
their ideological opposites. Over the last decade, many of these thinkers have
become close to Washington; forceful supporters of the War on Terror, they help
frame arguments for policymakers and provide the moral and intellectual
justification for Western military intervention across the globe. From Kanan
Makiya, one of the chief architects of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq,
to Bernard Henri-Levy’s advocacy of 'humanitarian' intervention, The Liberal
Defense of Murder traces the journey of these figures from left to right
and explores their critical role in the creation of the new American empire.
With wide-ranging testimony from many key figures on the left, this is a crucial
account of the emergence of the 'pro-war left,' and its shaping of our post-9/11
world."

Critical comments about the
first edition:

“"Richard
Seymour's obsessively researched,
impressive first book holds its
place as the most authoritative
historical analysis of its kind."
-- Resurgence

"[T]ruly impressive breadth and
depth...[providing]...a new European
perspective -- and a warning -- on
the left's pragmatic and ultimately
short-sighted support for imperialist
adventures." -- Journal of
American Studies

"[A] powerful counter-blast against
the monstrous regiment of 'useful
idiots'" who have "contributed in
recent decades to the murderous mess
of modern times."
-- Times of London

"[A]n excellent antidote to the
propagandists of the crisis of our
times."
-- Independent on Sunday

"[T]imely, provocative and
thought-provoking."
-- Independent

"Among those who share
responsibility for the carnage and
chaos in the Gulf are the useful
idiots who gave the war intellectual
cover and attempted to lend it a
liberal imprimatur. The more
belligerent they sounded the more
bankrupt they became; the more
strident their voice the more craven
their position.… Richard Seymour
expertly traces their descent from
humanitarian intervention to blatant
Islamophobia."
-- Gary Younge

"Indispensable...Seymour brilliantly
uncovers the pre-history and modern
reality of the so-called 'pro-war
Left'."
-- China Miéville

I have
added about 4,000 words of new material -- making it about 6% longer. I have
also
corrected several errors and typos, and have updated and made the argument clearer.

02/04/12: The rate at which I am re-writing the main Essays at this site has
been greatly slowed by several time consuming debates I have been engaged in
over the last few weeks:
here,
here,
here,
here and
here.

I have
added over 2000 words of new material, corrected a few errors and typos, and made the argument clearer.

01/02/12: A few years ago, I obtained a copy of Ian Hunt's Analytic and
Dialectical Marxism. I posted a few remarks on this book
here,
but I have now started to add more considered comments, aimed at showing that
despite Hunt's commitment to "clarity and rigour" in defence of dialectics, he
fails miserably to live up to both those aims.

This is
in fact a major re-write of this Essay which has up to now taken me the best part
of a month to do.

So far
this Essay about 25% longer -- at approximately 128,000 words.

I am
posting the changes as they are being made.

19/11/11: I have just finished re-writing Essay Eight Part Three -- What Are
'Dialectical Contradictions'? -- correcting several errors and
typos, and making the argument clearer. I have added about 1000 words of new
material.

Even though
Essay Twelve
Part One itself appeared several years ago, last year I decided to
post this Summary of the rest of Essay Twelve (which forms the core of my case
against metaphysics, and the forms-of-thought one finds in Hegel and
'materialist dialectics') since Sections Two to Seven of Essay Twelve will not be published for many years. This
delay has created a gaping hole in my argument. This Summary partially fills it.

I have
added about 10,000 words of new material (so the Essay is now approximately 20%
longer), corrected a few mistakes and typos, and made the argument clearer and
more comprehensive.

September 2011

27/09/11: Essay Six -- The Law Of identity Does Not Preclude Change
-- has just been completely re-written. I have added approximately 7000 words of
new material (which makes it about 15% longer), corrected several errors and
typos and made the argument clearer.

I have
added about 10,000 words of new material (which makes it nearly 20% longer),
corrected several errors and typos, and have made the argument clearer.

13/08/11: Because it is central to some of the main ideas presented at this
site, Essay Three Part One -- Abstract Ideas 1, The Heart Of The Beast -- has
just been completely re-written. I have added about 12,000 words of new material
(which makes it about 20% longer), corrected several errors and typos, and have
made the argument much clearer.

I have
corrected several errors and stylistic infelicities, clarified the argument
somewhat and added 4000 words of new material.

Incidentally, the Dialectical Mystics over at RevLeft, who have recently gained
a majority hold over the Admin department, banned me from posting any more of my
'awkward' posts at their site. They have done this since they certainly can't
win an argument with me.

A
supporter of my site, 'LJJW', who helped me write some of my Essays, has agreed
to post there in my stead, although he will not be able to do so quite as often
as I used to.

May 2011

14/05/11: I have just re-written the Basic Introductory Essay -- Why I
Oppose Dialectical Materialism -- correcting a few errors and
typos, making the argument clearer and adding 1000 words of new material.

08/05/11: A character at
RevLeft has tried to respond to some of my
arguments against Engels's so-called "First Law" -- The Transformation of
Quantity into Quality. I have responded to his criticisms
here.

05/05/11: The central sections of Essay Thirteen
Part Three
(i.e., (3) to (5) inclusive) have just been re-written. These deal largely with
Voloshinov's confused ideas about language and cognition. I have made the
argument much clearer, corrected a few errors and typos and have added over 1000
words of new material.

April 2011

17/04/11: I have just re-written Essay Eight Part Two -- Opposing Forces
Aren't Contradictions -- correcting several errors and typos, and
making the argument clearer. I have also added approximately 2000 words of new
material.

29/12/10: Having finished re-writing all the main Essays at this site, I am
now in the process of doing likewise with the summaries. To that end, I have now
completely re-written the Summary of Essay Two -- DM:
Imposed on Nature.

23/12/10: I have just published another essay by Guy Robinson -- On Misunderstanding Science --, an
exposition of Thomas Kuhn's work. Until Guy sends me some more material, this is
the last of the his essays I will be publish.

I am
now working on Essay Thirteen Part Two -- Dialectical Materialism And Science.
All being well, it should be ready to publish in the summer of 2012.

October 2010

23/10/10: I have just finished re-writing
Essay Thirteen
Part Three -- Mind, Language And Cognition; Voloshinov (And
Others) Debunked.

I have
corrected several errors and typos, made the argument clearer, and added about
9000 words of
new material. That Essay is now over 150,000 words long.

August 2010

26/08/10:
I have just finished re-writing Essay Thirteen Part One -- Lenin and the
Disappearing Definition of Matter.

I have
corrected several errors and typos, made the argument clearer, and added about
3000 words of
new material.

15/08/10:
I have just finished re-writing Essay Twelve Part One -- Dialectics And
Metaphysics, Or Lenin Thinks The Unthinkable.

I have
corrected several errors and typos, made the argument clearer, removed about
3000 words (that now appear in other Essays), and added about 10,000 words of
new material.

I have
added about 4500 words of new material, clarified the argument considerably, and
corrected several errors and typos.

I'd like
to bring to visitors' attention to the publication (at the end of May) of a
Marxist analysis of modern Toryism, The Meaning of David Cameron, by
Richard Seymour:

"Richard Seymour,
blogger of Lenin's Tomb fame, and
author of The Liberal Defence of Murder will be in store discussing his
latest publication, The Meaning of David Cameron.

Date and Time: Wednesday, May
26, 2010, 7:00pm - 9:00pm.

Location: Housmans Bookshop,
5 Caledonian Road, Kings Cross, London.

"The Tories are posing as a 'progressive' and 'radical' alternative to New
Labour. Drawing from George W Bush's 'compassionate conservatism', they maintain
that the 'Big Society' can do what 'Big Government' can't -- produce a
cohesive, mutually supportive, happy society. Cameron's court intellectual,
Philip Blond, maintains that this is a viable alternative to the failures of the
egalitarian left and the excessively pro-market right. But is this more than
campaign mood music? And are the conservative traditions that they draw on
-- from the bucolic, pseudo-medievalism of G K Chesterton to the
anti-statism of Friedrich Hayek -- really
a bulwark of progress and radicalism?

"Richard Seymour argues that such ideas can only seem 'progressive' in light of
New Labour's acquiescence to Thatcherism. To understand the Cameronites, it is
necessary to understand how the social landscape and corresponding political
language was transformed by the collapse of post-war social democracy and its
more radical competitors. To resist the Cameronites, he argues, it is necessary
to attack the neoliberal consensus on which all major parties found their
programme."

18/02/10: I have now published another of Guy Robinson's essays, the
Introduction to his second book, Philosophy
and Demystification, which has yet to find a publisher.

I have
also published a reply to a comrade, who, when he is not trying to be normal,
doubles-up as the in-house Fool of the Far Left -- our old friend,
Mr G.

January
2010

31/01/10: Over the next few weeks I will bepublishing several of Guy Robinson's Essays. These had until recently
been posted at Guy's site, which no longer seems to exist.

The
first Essay -- Making Materialism Historical -- has been posted
here.

In my opinion, Guy is one
of the few Marxist Philosophers whose work is genuinely worth reading. Indeed,
I'd go much further: I can't praise his book, Philosophy and Mystification
(Fordham University Press, 2003), too highly; it seems to me that this is
how Marxist Philosophy should be done.

I only encountered
Guy's work in 2005, but I soon saw that he had anticipated several of my own
ideas -- except he manages to express in two paragraphs what it takes me several
pages to say! Unlike the vast majority of work that claims to be Marxist, Guy's
work is a model of clarity. It is no accident, therefore, to see Guy writing in
the Wittgensteinian
tradition.

I am posting
these essays here with his permission, but no one should assume that he agrees
with any of the views expressed at this site -- other than those already
contained in his essays.

20/01/10: I have re-written Essay Eight Part Three --
What Are
Dialectical Contradictions? -- correcting several errors and
typos, and adding approximately 3000 words of new material. The Essay is now
just over 10% longer.

13/01/10: I have just re-written Essay Eight Part Two --
Forces Aren't
'Contradictions'. I have corrected several errors and typos, made the
argument clearer and added about 4000 words of new material.

I have
also deleted a 25,000 word section entitled "What are Dialectical
Contradictions?", which was reposted as Essay Eight
Part Three
a year or so ago. It made no sense to leave it in Part Two, therefore.

December 2009

19/12/09: I have just finished re-writing Essay Eight Part One --
Change Through
'Internal Contradictions'. I have corrected several errors, clarified
the argument, and deleted a long passage that now appears in Essay Ten Part One.

In have
added about 2000 words of new material, but because of the deletion, the Essay
is about 5% shorter.

07/12/09: Essay Seven Part One -- Engels's Three Laws -- has just been
re-written. I have made the argument clearer, corrected several errors and
typos, and added 5000 words of new material.

02/11/09: Essay Five -- Motion is Not Contradictory -- has just been
re-written. I have corrected several errors and typos and added over 6000 words
of new material.

October 2009

28/10/09: I have just finished re-writing the
Summary of the rest of Essay Twelve. Even though
Essay Twelve
Part One itself appeared several years ago, last year I decided to
post this Summary of the rest of Essay Twelve (which forms the core of my case
against metaphysics, and the forms-of-thought one finds in Hegel and
'materialist dialectics') since sections Two to Seven of Essay Twelve will not be published for many years. This
delay has created a gaping hole in my argument. The Summary partially fills it.

Anyway,
I thought this Summary was badly written and somewhat repetitive, so I decided
it needed a make-over. I have also added about 2000 words of new material.

12/10/09: I have just finished re-writing Essay Four:
Formal Logic Can
Handle Change, correcting several errors and typos. I have added
about 5% of new material, or 2500 words.

04/10/09: In the debate below, a rather irascible Dialectical Mystic has tried
to reply to me; I have responded
here.

Links
at the above page.

03/10/09: Several comrades have attempted to reply to one or two things I have
said in the response mentioned below. I have now replied to them
here.

02/10/09: Yet another obnoxious dialectician has tried to take me on.
Anyone interested in seeing him receive a good materialist slapping should read
this.

September 2009

27/09/09:
I have jut re-written Essay Three Part Two:
Abstract Ideas
-- Science On The Cheap. Again, I have clarified the argument,
corrected a few errors and typos, and added about 4000 words of new material,
making it just under 10% longer.

15/09/09: Essay Three Part One: (Abstract
Ideas -- The Heart Of The Beast) has just be re-written. I have
clarified the argument, corrected a few errors and typos, and added about 5000
words of new material, making it just under 10% longer.

The
discussion was reasonably comradely until I thought to question a few of the
things one of these dialecticians (one "Jurriaan") had to say. Upon that, he
soon descended into the by-now-to-be-expected dialectical abuse, vituperation,
use of scatological language and resort to lying. My reply to him has not yet
been published (it is awaiting moderation, which might take some time since I
am told the site is being re-designed), but it can be read
here in the meantime.

August
2009

28/08/09: Essay Two (Dialectics: Imposed On Nature) has just
been re-written. I have corrected a few errors and typos, clarified the argument
and added about 3000 words of new material.

18/08/09: I have completely re-written the
Summary of Essay Twelve Parts Two to Seven; when the rest of Essay
Twelve has been published, I will split it up into more manageable sections, since
it is far too long as it is.

I have
only posted it so that visitors can see where my argument will go in the future.

----oOo----

Ok, I
have moved the entire site to this new address.

Most of
the links below now work.

In the
intervening months I have completely re-written the
Basic
Introductory Essay to make it clearer and strengthen the arguments.

May
2009

19/06/09: I have just re-written Essay Thirteen Part One: Lenin's
Disappearing Definition of Matter. I have corrected several errors and
typos, clarified the argument and added about 5% of new material.

Incidentally, I have to move home at the end of June, so there will be very few new updates
published here over the next three months or so.

May
2009

15/05/09: I have just re-written the
Basic
Introductory Essay. I have added approximately 1000 words of new
material, corrected a few errors and re-worked the argument in places to make it
clearer.

17/03/09: I have just received a copy of Science & Society, volume 72, October 2008.
In this number, noted Marxist economist Guglielmo Carchedi tries in vain to make sense
of Marx's ideas on the calculus. Alas, his arguments have already been
neutralised in Essay Seven Part One (here).

It is
by far the longest Essay at this site (at over 141,000 words), hence the
repeated delays.

17/02/09: I will be posting Essay Thirteen Part Three in the next few days; yet
more delays I'm afraid. Anyway, it is now about 99% complete.

01/02/09: Essay Thirteen Part Three (on 'Mind', Language and Cognition) is
almost finished -- illness and the fact that it is easily the longest Essay I
have so far written (it is fast approaching 120,000 words) have delayed it by
another week to ten days.

January
2009

11/01/09: A couple of months ago, a supporter of this site sent a letter to the
editor of Socialist Review
in response to an article on dialectics
by John Rees. The editors did not publish that letter, but you can read it
here.

04/01/09: Visitors can view
here the pictures I took of the demonstration in London
yesterday protesting the Zionist slaughter in Gaza.

There
were at least 50,000 on the march, which was amazing really, in view of the fact
that it had only been called three days earlier.

December
2008

12/12/08: I have just re-written Essay Three
Part One
-- Abstraction: The Heart of the Beast.

I have
added about 5000 words of new material, corrected several errors and typos, and
made the argument clearer.

02/12/08: Another dialectical punch-up has developed at
Liam Macuaid's excellent blog. Anyone who
checks it out will see the same hackneyed examples wheeled out for the
thousandth time, the same evasive and abusive tactics, the same
scatological language.

These
erstwhile apostles of universal change are living proof that
Heraclitus got it all wrong -- they never
change.

Incidentally, Essay Thirteen Part Three (on 'Mind', Language and Cognition) is
on course to be published before the end of January. The long delay is down to
the fact that this is easily the longest Essay so far published.

November 2008

20/11/08: More Socialist Unity mayhem
here. Visitors will once again notice the same
bluster, prevarication and abuse from our mystically-compromised comrades.

10/11/08: The argument at Socialist Unity of the 7th (see below) has
kicked-off again, but I am not allowed to post
my reply there. However, comrades can read my response
here.

A few months ago I mentioned a book that was soon to be published,
The Liberal Defence of Murder (Verso Books, 2008). Well it has now appeared,
and I can whole-heartedly recommend it.

"Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number
of prominent thinkers on the Left found themselves increasingly aligned with
their ideological opposites. Over the last decade, many of these thinkers have
become close to Washington; forceful supporters of the War on Terror, they help
frame arguments for policymakers and provide the moral and intellectual
justification for Western military intervention across the globe. From Kanan
Makiya, one of the chief architects of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq,
to Bernard Henri-Levy’s advocacy of 'humanitarian' intervention, The Liberal
Defense of Murder traces the journey of these figures from left to right
and explores their critical role in the creation of the new American empire.
With wide-ranging testimony from many key figures on the left, this is a crucial
account of the emergence of the 'pro-war left,' and its shaping of our post-9/11
world.

"Richard Seymour lives and writes in
London. His website Lenin's Tomb comments on
issues such as imperialism, Zionism, Islamophobia and anti-capitalism, and
covers strikes and protests with footage, images and reportage. It has been
cited in, among others, Private Eye, the Guardian and
Slate. This is Richard Seymour's first book."

07/11/08: Over the last few days an argument over dialectics has broken out at
the Socialist Unity blog. Several comrades there
were content merely to abuse me (for no good reason) and post 'fibs' about me
and my beliefs.

However, before I could respond to the latest allegations about my work, the
owner of the site closed the thread!

No
worries; I have now written that response, and you can read it
here.

03/11/08: I have just re-written Essay One, which is an Introduction to this
site, and which explains why I began this project.

I am
still on course to finish Essay Thirteen Part Three ('Mind', Language and
Cognition) before Xmas.

October
2008

21/10/08: In the light of a few criticisms I have received from certain
comrades, I have completely re-written Essay Seven
Part One.
It is now approximately 15% longer at just under 91,000 words.

I am
still working on Essay Thirteen Part Three ('Mind', Language and Cognition); it should
be ready to publish before the end of December.

September
2008

28/09/08: I regularly search the internet for comments on my work. Some is
supportive, some not; but some is quite poor.
Here is the latest example of the latter. I
have straightened these comrades out
here.

24/09/08: I have now completely re-written the response to comrade Jones I posted at RevLeft,
mentioned below. I have entitled it "Engels
and Mickey Mouse Science".

12/09/08: I have just been informed that the
International Socialist Review has in fact published
the letter I sent them, in the
September/October issue, contrary to what I asserted below (entry for August
18th).

Comrade
Jones (the author of the
article that was the subject of my letter) has
responded with a surprisingly trite rebuttal.

I have
already posted a long reply to him
here; a more considered response will appear at
this site in the next few weeks.

However, anyone who accesses my reply will need to note that it was based on
a typed-out copy of the original response (by comrade Jones) posted at RevLeft by
yet another comrade (who made a few typos). I used that version of comrade
Jones's rebuttal since the link to the letters page at the
International Socialist website was not working (until I informed them of that
fact!), so I could not cut and paste his response.

That
will be rectified in the version I will be posting here.

11/09/08: In
August 2008, a supporter of this site sent a letter in to Socialist Review. The
editor decided not to publish it. You can read it here.

10/09/08: A week or so ago I received a copy of Ellen Meiksins Wood's latest
book Citizens
To Lords. A Social History Of Western Political
Thought From Antiquity To The Middle Ages (Verso, 2008).
I was pleasantly surprised to find that several of her main theses amply confirm
a number of my own. One of these is summarised by Neil Faulkner in the latest
issue of Socialist Review:

"Greek
democracy was traumatic for the ancient ruling class. Ellen Wood is right to
root her analysis of western political thought in the context of this
extraordinary historical experiment. For around 200 years, in the 5th and 4th
centuries BC, Athens and many other Greek city-states were ruled by ordinary
citizens. Major decisions -- like whether to go to war
- were made at mass meetings of thousands. The poorest hill farmer had the same
rights as the richest landowner. While it lasted, it was impossible for rulers
to screw their own people. Instead the rich faced wealth taxes and corruption
trials.

"The
Greek ruling class never forgot or forgave. They later combined with Macedonian
kings and Roman viceroys to smash democracy. This ancient class war between
landowners and peasants is the starting point for western political thought.
Other civilizations -- based on brutally enforced
obedience -- had no need for political theory: there
was a king, he was backed by god, his authority was beyond question, and that
was that. But the city-state was a community of free citizens, all doing
military service, all having political rights. Anything could happen
-- like cancellation of debts and redistribution of
land (the two great demands of the ancient left) --
and right wing intellectuals spent much time concocting theories to justify
inequality. This is the origin of Greek philosophy."
[Emphases added.]

The
main thrust of the last sentence above forms one of the main themes to Essays
Two,
Nine Part One,
Twelve Parts
One to Seven, and Fourteen
Part One: that philosophy has always expressed the most abstract forms of ruling-class ideology.

Hence, the
importation of Hegel's philosophical ideas into Marxism (upside down, or the
'right way up') has meant that "ruling ideas" now
dominate revolutionary socialism in the form of 'Materialist Dialectics'.

August
2008

18/08/08: A few weeks back I sent a letter to the editors of the
International Socialist Review about an
article they published on Engels's
Anti-Dühring. They chose not to publish that letter.

13/07/08: I have just re-written Essay Two -- Dialectics Imposed On Nature,
Not Read From It -- taking the opportunity to correct several errors and
typos, and to make the argument clearer. I have also added 10,000 words of new
material, so the Essay is now well over 30% longer.

11/07/08: Levins and Lewontin's Biology Under The Influence (Monthly
Review Press, 2007) has just landed on my desk. This book was given a glowing
review by Phil Webster in the latest issue of Socialist Review.

However, where this book touches on dialectics, it makes all the usual mistakes,
which Webster either does not know about, or missed. I will be adding a few
comments on this book in a later re-write of Essay Seven Part One, and Essay
Eleven Part Two.

A
supporter of this site will be sending a letter about the review to the editor;
we will see if she publishes it.

10/07/08: I have just re-written Essay Eleven
Part Two
-- Dialectical Holism, Full of Holes -- correcting several errors and
typos, making the argument clearer, and adding over 2500 words of new material.

June
2008

29/06/08: I have just re-written Essay Twelve
Part One
-- Dialectics And Metaphysics. I have corrected several errors, clarified the
argument and added some new material. It is now about 5% longer.

Because of its length, this footnote has in fact taken on a life of
its own. Buried
as it was in 08-02, it was not easy to access.

25/05/08: I have now published the Summary of Essay Eleven
Part One: "The 'Totality' -- WTF Is It?"

-----oOo-----

I have
been away for over three weeks, hence the lack of activity at this site of late.

The
next work to be published will be a summary of Essay Eleven Part One; that will
be followed sometime in July by Essay Thirteen Part Three: "Dialectics,
Language, 'Mind' and 'Cognition'".

April
2008

26/04/08: I am progressively re-writing
Essay
Sixteen, which is an extended summary of my ideas. Because of its
length, it has been broken up into manageable sections, each corresponding
more-or-less to one of the main Essays.

To that
end, I have just finished the summary of Essay Ten
Part One: Dialectics -- Refuted By History.

24/04/08: Because of the interest it is receiving (in fact it is currently the
most visited page at this site), I have just re-written Essay Ten
Part One,
making numerous small changes and correcting a few errors and typos.

23/04/08: Essay One has
just be re-written. This Essay explains the background to my work, and serves as
an Introduction.

21/04/08: The re-write of Essay Thirteen
Part One
(on Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-criticism) has just been completed.

I have
corrected several errors and typos and added about 3500 words of new material.

17/04/08: I have just re-written Essay Five, since it is still attracting much
interest.

I have
corrected a few errors and typos, made the argument clearer and added small
amounts of new material.

It is
now just short of 5% longer.

I am
also in the process of re-writing Essay Thirteen
Part One,
posting the changes as they are being made.

March
2008 Latest

31/03/08: The summary of Essay Nine
Part Two has just been published -- 'Militants
on Methadone'.

This
outlines the reasons why I think dialecticians have swallowed this ruling-class
theory, and the consequent damage this has done to Marxism.

27/03/08: I have now written and posted a summary of Essay Nine
Part One: 'Dialectics -- A Ruling-Class Theory'.

07/03/08: I have just finished re-writing
Essay Five
-- 'Motion is not Contradictory' -- making numerous small changes, correcting
several errors and typos, and adding some new material. It is now about 1000
words longer.

05/03/08: A few weeks ago, a sympathetic reader of my Essays added a comment
about my work to the article on DM at Wikipedia.

Unfortunately, a rather miffed Maoist and a thin-skinned Trotskyist deleted it
(the latter after it had been restored).

Apparently, such 'scientific' comrades can't tolerate the idea that their
theory has been systematically demolished, and think that censoring me will make
me or my ideas go away.

However, the original poster has restored it again. You can read it
here (if it is still there!).

[It can
be accessed in the History section of that article anyway.]

04/03/08: The seminar in Oxford went well. I filmed the talk and subsequent
discussion, but the lighting was poor. If I can improve the quality of the video
on edit, I'll post it on YouTube.

I'll
also post a transcript of the talk, and discussion at a later date.

The above page contains links to forums on the web where I have 'debated' this creed
with other comrades.

For anyone
interested: check out the desperate 'debating' tactics used by Dialectical
Mystics in their attempt to respond to my ideas.

You
will no doubt notice that the vast majority all say the same sorts of things, and
most of them pepper their remarks with scatological and abusive language. They
all like to make things up, too, about me and my beliefs. [Here
is a particularly egregious recent example of the lies they spin.]

30+
years (!!) of this from Dialectical Mystics has meant I now take an
aggressive stance toward them every time -- I soon learnt back in the 1980s that
being pleasant with them (my initial tactic) didn't alter by one jot their abusive tone,
their propensity to fabricate, nor reduce the amount of scatological language
they threw at me.

This Essay shows that contrary to a
widely held view on the left, Wittgenstein wasn't a
conservative mystic. In which case, there is now no good reason why his ideas
shouldn't be given a fair hearing by revolutionaries.

However, visitors would be wrong conclude from
its title that the above Essay is all about a certain philosophical theory and
its effect on Marxism.

It is just as much about the class origin of
the founders of our movement (and those who control its ideas today), as it is about that
theory.

As such it breaks entirely new ground, as anyone who reads
it will soon
see, providing for the first time a historical materialist explanation why
our movement so often fails and why almost everything that we on the
Revolutionary Left touch sooner or later becomes corrupted, falls apart, and then turns to dust.

Ex-SWP members, who left the organisation
because of its disastrous handling of this crisis have set up their
own
website.

Unfortunately, the creeping Stalinism of
the SWP seems to have carried over into this new site, for my posts
there are now being
deleted.

[I was allowed one post, but my reply to
Andy Wilson (follow the above link) was deleted. In fact, I am now being
told: "You do not have permission to post in this thread".]

It seems that any old material
concerning the
thoughts of assorted latter-days
Neo-Platonists,
Hermeticists and bourgeois apriorists -- such as
Raya Dunayevskaya, Zizek, Freud,
Lacan,
Heidegger, or the Lenin of the Philosophical Notebooks
-- is welcome, but the comments of a comrade who challenges such
mysticism aren't.

Another break-away group have set up
their own, and as far as I can see, non-sectarian website,
here.

~~~~oOo~~~~

July 2012: A supporter of this site sent a letter to Socialist Worker,
which they chose not to publish. You can read it
here.

October 2012: The same supporter sent a couple
of letters to the editors of Socialist Review and Socialist Worker
in response to two articles about John Molyneux's new book, The Point Is To
Change It: Introduction To Marxist Philosophy.

They chose not to publish either of them (no
surprise there!). Both can be accessed
here.

I have posted a few comments about John's book,
here. I will add
several more later this year.

Anyway, much that he has to say about
dialectics has already been taken apart
here and here.

A supporter of this
site is selling several hundred of his books (on
Marxism, Politics, Philosophy, Science, Mathematics, and
much else besides -- including several dozen copies of
International Socialism (many of which date back
to the 1970s and
1980s), and Historical Materialism --
here.

Back in 2007, a
leading member of the CPGB (Jack Conrad) wrote an article in
Weekly Worker criticising a few of the ideas found at this
site, and expressed in an earlier
article of mine.

Initially, I was quite shocked at how superficial and
irrelevant this comrade's response was.

I was in fact banned for censuring a
handful of male comrades who seemed fond of using the 'c'
word -- which is ironic since Socialist Unity
pretends to be a supporter of feminism.

Neutral observers can, of course, draw their
own conclusions!

Apparently, Andy Newman, the big cheese over
there, doesn't want anyone to be reminded he was/is a
supporter of this mystical theory (Dialectical Materialism)
now that he is cuddling up to the Labour Party.

So, before I was banned, he regularly
deleted any comments of mine that alluded to his former
'philosophical' allegiances, no matter how mild or nuanced
they were.

Dialectical Materialism(DM) and 'Materialist
Dialectics' (MD) have been the official philosophies of active
revolutionary socialists for over a hundred and thirty
years.

During that time,
Dialectical Marxism has 'enjoyed' spectacular lack
of success.

[Please note my use of the
term 'Dialectical Marxism' -- the non-dialectical version hasn't been road
tested yet. On the difference between HM and DM, see
here.]

Given the fact that
dialecticians assure us that truth is tested in practice, and that MD is the
main-spring of all they do, this can only mean that this 'theory' has been
tested and shown to fail.

However, not only is it virtually impossible for most
Dialectical Marxists to accept this negative picture of their own
'success', it is more difficult still for them to blame it
even so much as partially on the
misbegotten theory they have inherited from Hegel.

In fact, it doesn't even make the
bottom of the reserve list.

This
must mean that
in a world where dialecticians claim that everything is interconnected, the only
two things in the entire universe that are not inter-linked are the long-term
failure of Dialectical Marxism and its core theory: MD!

This
is impossible to believe.

Unfortunately, the aforementioned denial means that
Dialectical Marxists never seem to learn from theirmistakes --, they just blame long-term failure on anything and everything else.

Naturally, this just leads
to
yet more failures, and the cycle continues year after
year.

This
site has been set up to substantiate these allegations, as well as to advance
several more; among which are the following:

To avoid misunderstanding, it is worth emphasising that my argument here isn't as follows:
Dialectical Marxism has failed, therefore MD is false. My argument is: (1) MD
and DM make no sense whatsoever so,
(2) No wonder they have failed us for so long.

This site is aimed at establishing
point (1) so that conclusion (2) may be drawn from it.

Of course, highly
controversial claims like these require considerable proof; that is why
the Essays posted here go into such unprecedented detail.

Unfortunately, when I write short articles, dialecticians complain about their
"superficiality". Then, in response to my greatly extended Essays,
they moan that they are too long!

The
plain fact is, of course, that dialecticians already have the truth, and despite what
Lenin said (about no theory being final), they treat theirs as if it had been
delivered to them from on high on stone tablets.

Despite their belief that all change is the result of contradiction,
dialecticians do not like to be contradicted.

Nevertheless,
those who like their Internet articles short and sweet
will find shorter summaries of all the main Essays here.

In August 2006, I added an 'Absolute Beginners'
page, and in the summer of 2007
I published an even shorter Essay, 'Anti-Dialectics
For Dummies' -- which is meant for those who find even these
summaries either too long or difficult.

True to form, some DM-fans
have complained about the superficiality of these summaries!

Great care
has been taken with these Essays; they have been distilled from work I
have been doing for the last fifteen years, even
though I have been mulling over these ideas
for twenty-five or more. Literally thousands of hours have gone into
writing, re-writing and re-thinking this material. In addition, I have spent
more money than I care to mention obtaining literally
thousands of obscure books, theses and papers on
a whole range of topics directly or indirectly connected with DM/MD.

In that case, anyone who
can't bring to this discussion the seriousness it deserves is encouraged to go
and waste their time elsewhere. I am not interested in communicating with clowns.

Essay One
expands on the above comments, and explains: (1) Why I
began this project, (2) Why the tone I have adopted is unremittingly hostile, and
(3) Why
I have gone into such unprecedented detail.

(1) It is important to
emphasise from the outset that I am notblaming the
long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism solely on the acceptance of
theHermetic ideas dialecticians
have inheritedfrom Hegel.

It is worth repeating this since I still
encounter comments on Internet Discussion Boards, and still receive e-mails from
those who claim to have read the above words, who still think I am blaming all
our woes on dialectics. I am not.

However, no matter how many times I
repeat the above caveat, the message will not sink in -- and this is after
several years of continually making that
very point!

It seems this is one part of the
universe over which the
Heraclitean Flux
has no power!

I
hope I'm wrong about this, but bitter experience over the last
twenty-five years 'debating' with the DM-faithful tells me I am talking to
comrades with stoppered ears and
closed minds. Internet 'discussions' have merely confirmed (if not
greatly amplified) this
negative impression.

Someone has to try to
prevent younger
comrades from catching this Hermetic virus.

(3) Now, if Dialectical Marxism were a ringing success,
it is I who would be on the defensive, and dialecticianscould
rightly ignore these Essays.

However, it
is over one hundred and fifty years since the Communist Manifesto
was published, and we still do not have a Workers' State
anywhere
on the planet --, despite the fact
that the working class can now be
numbered in the billions and is by far and away
the biggest class on earth.

Indeed, we seem to be
further away from that goal than the Bolsheviks were in 1917!

[The fact that openly
fascist and right-wing parties led the revolt in the Ukraine is irrelevant to
the point I am making: if they can fight armed police on the streets, why
couldn't Russian workers do the same to defend 'their state' back in 1991? The
question answers itself: it wasn't 'their state' and hadn't been since the early
1920s.]

In late September 2014 we saw the streets of
Hong Kong blocked by tens of thousands of
protesters demanding "free and fair elections", and in June 2015, we
saw
tens of thousands of protesters in Yerevan,
capital city of Armenia, prevent an electricity price hike!

So, ordinary workers in Lebanon will protest rubbish collection, and
face up to riot police, but the tens of millions of workers in the former
Soviet Union (fSU) and Eastern Europe, supposedly the most powerful working class in
history, allegedly in control of the state, the police, the military, the courts,
the unions,
and the media, couldn't be bothered to lift one finger in defence of 'socialism'.

Compare the passivity of workers in the
Communist Block back in 1989/91 with the above, or with way that ordinary citizens responded to
the
attempted coup in Turkey in July 2016. Workers
in their tens of thousand poured on to the streets, lying down in front of tanks to defend even
this fractured and corrupt bourgeois democracy --
with
in excess of 200 killed and over 2000 wounded.

The
only two conclusions possible here are the following: (i) Russian workers,
despite being the most powerful and well-organised working class in human
history, allegedly in control not only of one of the mightiest military forces
on the planet, but the unions, the police, the party, the state bureaucracy, the
courts, and the media (etc., etc.), were in fact the most cowardly and
pusillanimous working class ever, or (ii) The former Soviet Union
wasn't socialist and workers were glad to see the back of it. The same can be
said of workers in the rest of the Communist Block.

On top of this, communist partiesthe world overhave adopted
market forms of capitalism,
and mostof them, despite
the rhetoric, have embraced openly reformist, if not neo-liberal,
dogma.

Trotskyism is,
if anything, in even worseshape. It is riddled with deep
divisions and proliferating
sects. With few exceptions, its
parties are vanishingly small, constantly at each other's
throats, and rabidly
sectarian.

Dialectical Trotskyism is thus even less successful than
Maoism and Stalinism have been -- well, is
there a Trotskyist Workers' State anywhere on earth? Has there ever been?

And I say that as a
Trotskyist!

Sure, we could point to Russia in 1917, but even that has gone
backwards!

[The idea that DM was of central importance to
the Bolsheviks in 1917 has been laid to rest
here.]

Unfortunately, because of its propensity to provoke
endless
splits (its one genuine growth area), Trotskyism
isnow a standing joke:

Video Five: 'The Life Of Brian'

Libertarian Communism, too, is almost non-existent,
and is thus politically impotent -- but, for all their
chest
beating, you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise. In fact, this is one of the few areas
of Dialectical Marxism that makes Trotskyism look successful in comparison!

Furthermore, Marxist (revolutionary)
parties have not noticeably benefited from theworld-wide radicalisation created by the
Anti-Globalisation
Movementor the
unprecedented world-wide opposition mounted against
the 'allied' invasions of Iraq and
Afghanistan.

Comparethat
with the way many
of the above parties grew
in the first half of the 20th century, or in the 1960s and
1970s.

Compare it, too, with the way
that non-Marxist, anarchist, anti-capitalist (and thus largely
non-dialectical), or autonomist groups
have grown since 1999.

For most people, rightly or wrongly,
Dialectical Marxism has become a by-word for
childish and petty in-fighting, bureaucratic authoritarianism,
mindless inertia,
systematic oppression, brutal mass murder, widespread denial of freedom, and
vicious dictatorship.

[This shouldn't be taken to mean I think this shameful record can't
be changed for
the better. That is, after all, why I began this project!]

And yet, there are comrades who
will tell youwith a straight facethat
Dialectical Marxism isaringing
success, since it has been 'tested in practice'!

Such benighted souls will not respond to
anything I have to say (even if they were listening); pathological
myopia of this order of magnitude requires professional help.

Figure Thirty-One: Dialectical
Marxism
--

'Tested In Practice'

Dialecticians claim that
DM/MD is the dynamic heart of both Marxist
politics and material reality, and that it is the guiding light of all
they do.

If revolutionary practice has dialectics stamped all over it
and 'truth is tested in practice' --
and if the vast bulk of that practice has failed -- the inescapable conclusion is that
practice has refuted dialectics.

Because
its supporters claim such a prominent role for
DM/MD in their practice, thefailure of the subjective side ofDialectical Marxism points nowhere else but here.

[Clearly, only those who reject the idea that truth is tested in practice
should feel confident enough
to resist that
particular conclusion.]

To those who think this is
an Idealist explanation for the failure of Dialectical Marxism: In fact, I
advance historical and materialist reasons
(based on ideas floated by Marx and Lenin)
why dialectics has had this negative effect on the movement.

And to those who have read
the above, and who think I am claiming that Marxism is a failure: please read it again,
and note that I am referring to "Dialectical Marxism".

As I noted earlier: the non-dialectical
version hasn't been road tested
yet.

Hence, it is dialecticians who should be on the defensive.

They are
the ones who still adhere to a theory that has presided over 140+ years of almost
total failure.

In
that case, we
have no alternative; we have to re-think our ideas from
scratch, like the radicals we claim to be.

To that end, I propose a suitably
radical starting point: the rejection of the theory that
history has already refuted: 'Materialist Dialectics'.

Indeed, for several generations
workers have sent a
very clear message our way: they are
not the least bit interested in Dialectical Mysticism, or in
those who peddle either it the version that has been put the
'right way up'.

So, if
change is indeed caused by "internal contradictions"
-- as dialecticians
allege --, let it begin here with
the many I have exposed in their theory.

In that case, comrades, you have nothing to lose but your
failed theory of change.

(4) Some might wonder how I can count myself as both a Leninist and a Trotskyist
while advancing such profound criticisms of the ideas that the
founders of both these traditions regarded as fundamental to Marxism.

Well, we can surely recognise Newton's genius while rejecting his
Alchemical and
Kabbalisticramblings, just as we can be
severely critical of him for wasting
so much time and effort on such worthless
rubbish.

The same comment applies to the
dialectical
writings of Engels, Lenin,
and Trotsky. Hence, even though
I hold their work inpolitics, economics and
historyin the highest regard, I am no less
dismissive of the mystical gobbledygook they imported
into our movement.

In fact, and on the contrary, a slavish acceptance of everything these great
revolutionaries had to say
about
dialectics -- just because they said it, and just because the vast majority
of comrades think highly of it --, would be to spit on their graves.

Marxism is not a personality cult. If it
were, then Marx,
Engels, Lenin and Trotsky would have been the first to turn their backs
on it.

The radical movement was built on a lack of respect for mindlesstradition like this.

Anyone who still prefers
the safe confines of dogma is encouraged instead to join the Roman Catholic
Church.

(5) Those who might be tempted to think that this is
"just another attack on dialectics" -- something the enemies of Marxism are
always attempting (since the dialectic in
history is "an abomination to the bourgeoisie",
etc., etc.) -- need only
reflect on the fact that revolutionaries like me attack dialectics
because it is by far and away the weakest aspect of
Marxist theory (a boast that is as easy to make as it is to substantiate -- as
the Essays posted at this site amply demonstrate), and this we do in order to strengthen,
not weaken,
Revolutionary Socialism.

On the other hand, our enemies attack dialectics simply because it is
such an easy target
--, and they do so for the opposite reasons.

Rightly or wrongly, this site is aimed at impacting on the class war by
seeking to influence those actually involved in it. Since active revolutionaries still accept
-- to a greater or lesser extent --
classical forms of DM/MD, they alone are being addressed in what follows.

Academic
Marxism (mercifully) has had no impact on the class struggle, or none of any note
--,
and
it probably never
will.

Very little
attempt has been made, therefore, to engage with this theoretical dead end.

It is also worth pointing out here that I am not just attacking 'Diamat' (i.e.,
the 'orthodox' Soviet Russian version of DM), but all aspects of MD.

Figure Thirty-Two: Academic Marxism
-- The Movie

Of course, there are notable exceptions to
these sweeping
generalisations, but they are just
that: exceptions.Some academic Marxists have fought,
and still fight,
alongside workers in the class war.

However, I can think of no work published by an academic
Marxist that has ever impacted on the class struggle (except perhaps negatively).

Such comrades, who spare no effort telling us that 'praxis' is a core
principle of Marxism, are clearly living on a different planet to the rest of
us, for their work has had no discernible impact on the class war!

(7) These Essays represent work in progress; hence they do not
necessarily reflect my final view.

I am only publishing this material on the Internet
because several comrades whose opinions I respect urged me to do so back in 2005
-- even though
the work you see before you is less than half complete. Many of my ideas are still in
the formative stage and need
considerable
attention devoted to them to
mature.

I estimate this project
will take another ten years to complete before it is fit to publish either here
in its final form or in hard copy.

All of these Essays will have radically
changed by then.

This work
will be updated regularly -- edited and re-edited
constantly --, its arguments clarified andprogressivelystrengthened as my
research continues (and particularly as my 'understanding' of Hegel develops).

So, visitors are encouraged to check back often.

As of February 2019,

I have posted
Essaysand other material
totalling
in excess of three million words.

This is
approximately 80% of all the material I have.
Far more will be added as my researches continue.

However, much of the second half of this work
still exists only in note form, so the
next set of
Essays will appear here far more slowly than the first.

Anyone who
objects to the length of these Essays should rather pick a fight with Marx,
Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin
and Trotsky -- and Hegel -- whose
collected work easily dwarfs my own.

However, as noted above, whenever I post short summaries of my ideas, DM-fans
moan about their superficiality.

Then, if I enter into greater detail, they complain
even more about their length!

(8)
Finally, and most importantly: I can't emphasise strongly enough that
nothing written here is intended to undermine Revolutionary
Socialism -- or Historical Materialism [HM], a scientific theory I fully accept (provided
that the
pernicious influence of Hegel has been completely
excised).

HM will therefore be taken for granted.

This means that any non-Marxists
who visit this site are advised to go no further; this material
isn't intended for them.

Finally:

Several
critics have taken the above comments as
definitive of my entire work, and have therefore
read no further, when these are merely opening remarks that represent
about 0.001% of the material posted at this site!

This page
is deliberately provocative and isn't meant to contain water-tight
arguments; it is merely a statement of intent.

In contrast, the
Essays I have posted so far
are meant to be definitive. Whether
they attain
that particularly high standard is, of course, another matter.

However, to date, no one has been able to
respond effectively to my Essays (including thisposeur).

Clearly, this superficial approachto my workmakes about as much sense as
someone who reads the opening page
of the Preface to Das Kapital and judges all that Marx
ever wrote on the basis of
that!